You And I, Plural
by Fiare
Summary: Alfred F. Jones, his country, and the incompatibilities between the two divide them and unite them. Alfred F. Jones despises it, and that sentiment, oddly enough, is not reciprocated. Alfred F. Jones is fracturing from within, and the reflections from the shattered mirror of his soul transcend time. Alfred F. Jones laments that fact.


**I. I apologize for any historical or grammatical inaccuracies. Please notify me of these. **

**II. Please excuse any out-of-character portions. **

**III. I do not own Hetalia. **

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**[Recording Device Activated]**

**[Recording Initiated]**

I, uh, I don't know why I'm doing this. I mean, I'm supposed to be heroic, I shouldn't be recording this, but, as the psychiatrists within my borders have reiterated time and time again, denial is horrible for mental health. And mental convalescence, I guess.

Every instinct, primitive or one of those embedded desires ingrained after years of propaganda and repetition, is telling me to get up, shut my laptop, get a hamburger at one of my restaurants, calm down, talk to a girl, listen to music, whatever a typical citizen does. Being more like them would be useful, right? I'm nothing more than a composite of their hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, failures, imperfections, losses, so doing whatever they do should be enough. Yeah.

Except that's it. Hamburgers are a German product. Shouldn't I have my own identity? Shouldn't I be something other than the common denominator, the average? What happened to the rebellion against conformity? Why the complacency as my cou- as _I _collapse on myself?

I know what happens when a supernova collapses. The density of it warps time and space, and it forms a black hole. And then, then- it takes _everything _with it. This galaxy distorts around one. The entire _galaxy _spirals into oblivion, and light-years from here, planets are destroyed at the subatomic level after they cross the event horizon. One bright, ephemeral moment as _light _is diverted from its path, and then an infinity of darkness. And then there's the singularity, the point of compression, presumably, where everything begins and ends.

You know, I kinda want one of my scientists to figure out what a singularity really is. It's theoretical now, nobody truly knows what they are. I've heard theories about it, about the five-dimensional space and the interaction of gravity and light, time and space, and I've attended boring seminars.

There it is again.

It seems that I can't keep a constant tone, or atmosphere, hell if I ever learn how to _read _it, and that's the problem. That's my predicament. But a predicament implies a correctible situation, so- Yeah, I don't know.

I'm the amalgamation of every single citizen of the United States of America, past, present, and future. I change my inflection with every word, my intonation as capricious as my vocabulary. Of course, I attempt to present a constant façade of cheerful insouciance, but that can't work all the time. I'm splintering from within. There's so much division in my country, and not like peaceful coexistence with differing values, _but every goddamned inch of me feels like it's tearing apart. _

It's quiet, it's insidious, it's not dramatic and violent like the civil war. It's vicious, though.

I'm starting to wonder who Alfred F. Jones is. Maybe I don't want to be a country, with conflicts and inner turmoil, with oppression and despicable actions committed by all the opposing sides. Perhaps humanity would be more suitable. At least I'd have constants. Or, you know, an equation. The constants can come later.

I'm so self-centered. Syria's engaged in civil war, but I'm complaining about my lack of national unity.

_I'm complaining about my lack of national unity._

I mean, do people even have to think about this? How many of my citizens feel like they're suffocating and fragmenting simultaneously, like they're barely recovering from a recession, like their hearts were in flames and glittering with broken glass and shattered lives barely a decade ago?

I'm America. I'm Alfred F. Jones. I'm not compatible. I'm an anomaly, a world superpower, a heroic figure, and the entire world- I can't tell if it loathes me.

I _hate _it. I hate being the bartender at a speakeasy a century or so ago, a New York accent filtering through the grey light, the floors dusty, almost, but not quite illuminated by the striated streetlamps. I hate the sun blistering across a turquoise sky on a summer day in Virginia. I hate purchasing a quill and imitation parchment at a historical reconstruction and writing letters to the long-deceased. I hate burning them afterwards. I hate knowing the precise temperature of Prismatic Springs in Yellowstone National Park. I hate the people who died in those springs. I hate xenophobia, and simultaneously fear others. I hate the exquisite nocturnes that a local man's daughter plays on an old piano out in Texas , and I hate the honeyed rays of sunlight on the trees that make it _so damn picturesque. _

I hate matching every set of fingerprints in the database. I hate knowing a citizen's entire life when I look in their eyes. I hate my idiotic suggestions at the world summits. I hate the perpetual fluctuations of personality and mannerisms as one portion of the population maintains dominance for a time and then fades.

_I hate it. _

I hate looking up at the night sky and seeing midnight chipped with stars, and wishing that I hadn't seen it thousands of times through millions of eyes in billions of shifting memories. I want to look up and see the horizon sweetened by the sunset, but I'm bombarded with images. A veritable artillery of sensation, when I want to immortalize the now in a memory of my own.

America hates Alfred F. Jones, I guess. America won't let him rest at night when he wants to relax, sleep, play video games, whatever.

I want to pray like I did in the past, like my people did in the past, for deliverance, like some higher power will separate me from my boundaries, so I can be a person, individual, not a combination of contradictory elements.

But I'm secular. And then I'm religious. And the past, present, future become confused. I can see flickering entertainment holograms and lambent neon signs. I can see campfires and automobiles. I want to close my eyes and see black.

Is that too much to ask?

Yeah, it is. I'm destined for disconnect and disparity. I suppose I can't ask for anything. I'm a country. I stand alone. Distance and solitude- isolationism.

I guess I will pray now. There's not much left to say.

God, Allah, anyone, I don't even know who I'm supposed to ask anymore, or if the regulations permit me to inquire, or whatever, but please.

I-I just-

**[Recording Terminated]**

**[Recording Device Standing By]**

**[Recording Device Signal Lost]**


End file.
